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Aug 12, 2023
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Michael Green's avatar

China is not communist as far as there is industry and property owned by private individuals and certainly it is not a classless society. It becomes difficult to clarify completely it’s social and economic status. One could say socialistic as fairly accurate but also tending toward heavily regulated capitalism. They have a significant middle class now. Capitalism in the US is a distorted concept as it is not based on free market mechanisms, greed and power have corrupted our system. We have unfettered capitalism and a system where most all wealth resides in the hands of a few. It certainly is bound for failure as our Earth is being destroyed for more and more, and eventually desperate people will rise up against the inequities. I am not an economist but call it as I see it.

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Susan Mercurio's avatar

Are you responding to Michael G?

Or to some mythical creature in your own head?

Because none of what Michael G said about the capitalism in the US today could possibly be misconstrued as "fan" talk.

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Society's Stinky Parts's avatar

There is private property, there is a single labor market, there is a workplace. Where all three of those are present, there is capitalism. Self-identity doesn't cut it.

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Society's Stinky Parts's avatar

I will grant that they seem to have some public utilities for personal provision and strong informal institutions to fill some of the voids, e.g. filial piety lessening the need for pensions.

When I say property I mean not real property, but property more expansively. Not all enterprises are state-owned. Foreign direct investment still exists, and has only expanded under RCEP and other liberalizing trade agreements. They're granting more rights to foreign owners, if the Premier's own words are to be believed, which I would call a move in the wrong direction. IP, in particular, is theft.

https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3215649/boao-vow-li-qiang-comes-right-time-china-and-world

>Li told [foreign executives, politicians and researchers] the mainland would align with international rules and strive to create a market-oriented, rule-of-law-based and internationalised environment.

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Society's Stinky Parts's avatar

At which meeting was "total global Unity and Order" decreed desirable, and to the benefit of which classes? Where are the ideologists working to displace or negate this stuff? I don't propose any top-down theories of the world at all because every one rests on the foundations of Plato's unwritten doctrines: the doctrine of the One, and the doctrine of the Great and the Small.

As you might surmise from my name, insofar as I adhere to any direction, it is to contribute as best I can to liquifying that foundation and preventing anything from being built on it ever again. Everything classical society ever loved was error, or an instrument with which to love error, including the forms of devotion, sacrifice, heroism, contest, and virtue, and I am quite nearly prepared to extend that assertion to love itself.

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